rang, but the house lay dark and silent. A little housemaid
with brown, startled eyes, came at last, just as she was beginning to
grow alarmed at the darkness and stillness, and stared at her.

"Was it you that rang, madam?" asked this little housemaid; "the doctor
is out: he will not be back to-night."

"And the nurse?" she inquired, vexed at this lack of thought of her.

"The nurse has gone long ago, madam, for the night."

A flood of nervous anger broke over her.

"How disgraceful!" she cried; "how unkind! To leave me here like this!
What time is it, pray?"

"It is very late, madam; I could not tell you the hour."

The little housemaid yawned and pressed her tumbled cap straight.

She bit her lips to keep herself from angry tears and rushed through the
heavy street door, down the stone steps, out upon the pavement. Angrily
she sped along, brushing by the people, who, in turn, stumbled rudely
against her. The jostling crowd brimmed her eyes; she walked as one in a
mist.

"How cruel everyone is to me!" she whispered to herself and walked
faster. Suddenly a thought came to her. Where was she going? Surely she
ought not to attempt to walk all the way to her home, so late at night?
She must call a carriage. She fumbled vaguely in the little bag at her
wrist, but no purse was there; only a few small coins.

"I must get into a street-car," she thought dully, and just then a
noisy, lighted street-car rushed toward her on a cross-street and she
entered it as it stopped to take in a group of workmen. They shouldered
by her roughly, and one of them laid his greasy bundle half upon her
lap; she shrunk into a corner. She held out her coin to the brisk
collector, but he passed her by, took one from all of the others, and
left her, shaking, haunted by a nameless dread.

"Here is my fare!" she called to him, but he, whistling, left her in her
corner.

She hid her face in her hands and tried to control her whirling
thoughts, but her brain raced like a mill stream and her legs shook
under her trailing skirt. All too late she remembered that her carriage
was waiting for her at the doctor's: she ought not to have rushed into
the street. She was giddy and confused, and knew that her mind was the
mind of one in the grip of fever. On and on the street-car rumbled; one
by one the workmen brushed by her and got out.

"Have I been here hours or minutes?" she wondered, but dared not speak.

Now she was alone in the car. She pee